Howard Stark
|history= Millionaire. Industrialist. Playboy. Genius. Everything that his son Tony would go on to be, Howard was first. Together with his father, he founded Stark Industries. Given the state of conflict of the world, it was only natural that he focused his genius on matters of national defense. He was part of the Manhattan Project and developed weaponry for the allies. He lived the playboy life through most of his adulthood, but even playboys get played out. He married the younger Maria Carbonell in the late 60s, and they had a son, Tony. His relationship with his son was always a mixture of pride and friction. He never quite learned how to relate to his son, and except for the occasional photo op and meeting of minds on projects, they had a very arms-length relationship. Howard had long been involved with SHIELD and other top secret projects to develop technology for various uses. One of these projects was the Life Model Decoy. Although the business of running Stark Industries took up much of his time, he had time for pet projects. The LMD was one of those, though in truth, he should have spent that free time with his family. He and Maria had been living separate lives for years and were husband and wife in name only. Howard worked on the LMD project in a secret lab that was not listed under Stark Industries' assets. The project was incredibly secret. It involved creating nanobot-powered duplicates that the subject could control from afar. These duplicates would be able to pass medical scanners, retina scans, fool telepaths and even mimic real injury. For the prototype, Howard used his lab assistant, Bastian Long, as the model. He had to make adjustments to the scan as he went, which made it necessary to copy someone else. However, he was unwilling to let his assistant risk connecting to the prototype LMD, so he linked it to himself. By all accounts, the initial tests were a success. Howard was, tragically, unable to continue tests. On the way back from a charity dinner, Maria and he were in a car accident. Both of them should have died then and there, but the last time Howard disconnected from the LMD, he did not disconnect completely. There was also a failsafe protocol that Howard had written but had not meant to activate that would upload the consciousness from a human into the LMD permanently should the human body be killed. The trauma of the accident activated that protocol. His body died, but his consciousness survived. His consciousness, inside the LMD of Bastian Long, has lain dormant in the secret lab for decades, waiting for someone to find it and reactivate him. The only people who knew the lab's location were Long and Howard, and Long was the target of an assassin only hours before Howard's car wreck. The death of Howard and Bastian Long set the LMD project back a year, which may have been the intent. }} Category:Character Category:FC Category:Hero Category:Unregistered